Coca-Cola's plastic secrets | DW Documentary

October 17, 2019 4:21 AM

By 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the sea. Ten tons of plastic are produced every second. Sooner or later, a tenth of that will end up in the oceans. Coca-Cola says it wants to do something about it - but does it really? (YouTube link)
posted by flabdablet (39 comments total)

If Coca-Cola were to unilaterally stop using plastic bottles, switching back to the old-fashioned glass bottles, the increased costs could be covered by the retro, artisanal feel of the bottles, and the sense of vintage midcentury cachet they'd convey. Also, they'd have a ready-made slogan covering the environmental reasons for the change: “Be Woke, Drink Coke™”.
posted by acb at 4:57 AM on October 17, 2019 [9 favorites]

Given Coca-Cola's current sales volume, it would be interesting to see an updated version of the model comparing the total environmental impacts of returning, washing and re-using heavy glass bottles to that of collecting, shredding and re-manufacturing lightweight plastic ones.

It also strikes me as fascinating that a corporation keen to portray itself as pushing hard for a "circular economy" would have spent as much time and money as it has on opposing container deposit legislation in Australia. I can see no sound objection at all to transferring at least part of the cost of litter collection onto the litterer; hell, even Keep America Beautiful should be able to get behind that principle.
posted by flabdablet at 5:27 AM on October 17, 2019 [10 favorites]

Forget glass, the new hotness is evidently paper bottles.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:36 AM on October 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

I feel like nothing is going to help except making it illegal to use plastic for any kind of disposable packaging.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:36 AM on October 17, 2019 [23 favorites]

So, not drinking soda pop is off the table?
posted by ardgedee at 5:47 AM on October 17, 2019 [8 favorites]

If they ever make an "Idiocracier" movie; they won't need near as much CGI for the back grounds.
posted by buzzman at 6:05 AM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's better if you drink soda pop at the table, unless you have a disposable plastic cup with a lid.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:07 AM on October 17, 2019

So, not drinking soda pop is off the table?

Go back to Russia, you commie! *belch*
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:35 AM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

“Be Woke, Drink Coke™”

There are people who would go out of their way to buy plastic bottles and dump them directly into the ocean and/or burn them just to spite this slogan.
posted by Chaffinch at 7:36 AM on October 17, 2019 [17 favorites]

If Coca-Cola were to unilaterally stop using plastic bottles, switching back to the old-fashioned glass bottles, the increased costs could be covered by the retro, artisanal feel of the bottles, and the sense of vintage midcentury cachet they'd convey. Also, they'd have a ready-made slogan covering the environmental reasons for the change: “Be Woke, Drink Coke™”.

Part of the reason Coca-Cola switched to plastic bottles was because when they started bottling liter+ glass bottles of cola they exploded because the glass couldn't handle the pressure under cola bottle's normal use cases. It turned out that lying bottles down in the fridge made them into unintentional IEDs.

I know this because less than a block away from my house a kid I knew's father was blinded in one eye when he opened his fridge door and cola bottle blew up in his face.

Also apparently Canadian singing icon Anne Murray was also a victim
posted by srboisvert at 7:42 AM on October 17, 2019 [13 favorites]

I'm never going to stop drinking cokes, and that proposal is a permanent non-starter for me, dissolved sugar in bubbly water is one of the joys of living... but damn I wish they'd stop selling soda in 12oz and 20oz plastic bottles. Aluminum cans exist! They work great! Why can't you sell me an Orange Vanilla Coke in an aluminum can? Nothing wrong with an aluminum tallboy if you gotta have 16 ounces. And glass bottles are the vinyl craze of soda drinking, fight me.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 7:44 AM on October 17, 2019 [11 favorites]

Why not sidestep the whole "plastic or glass?" issue and just use larger cans, like craft beer nerds do?

They call them "crowlers," I believe, and their 32-ounce capacity is pretty much in line with a 2-liter bottle. Talboy can could replace 20-ounce plastic bottles, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:56 AM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

I physically cannot consume 20 oz of anything and I get so perturbed when I'm jonesing for a soda and I'm out and about and the only way I can purchase one is in a vessel where I'm guaranteed to waste half of it. A 12oz can is the perfect hydration solution and they are so rare anymore in places where cold pop is sold.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:59 AM on October 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

Meanwhile, the umbrella corp Unilever (Wikipedia list of Unilever brands) says that "it wants to" halve its use of virgin plastics by 2025 (CNBC, Oct. 6, 2019)

The business, whose brands include Dove, Ben & Jerry’s and Lipton, said it would achieve this by cutting its “absolute use of plastic packaging” by over 100,000 tonnes and “accelerating its use of recycled plastic.” Virgin plastics are produced using raw materials, rather than recycled ones.

The Anglo-Dutch firm also vowed to “help collect and process more plastic packaging than it sells.” Unilever’s current plastic packaging footprint is around 700,000 tonnes each year.

A lot of soft phrasing there, making this sound more of an aspiration than an actual goal.

And earlier this year, The world’s biggest makers of shampoo, detergent and packaged food will test selling their products in reusable containers, adopting a milkman-style model to address mounting concerns about plastic waste. (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 24, 2019)

Procter & Gamble Co. , Nestlé SA, PepsiCo Inc. and Unilever PLC are among 25 companies that, this summer, will start selling some products in glass, steel and other containers designed to be returned, cleaned and refilled.

Oh hey, it's Unilever again! And it looks like Loop is live (in the Mid-Atlantic United States, or online), allowing you to buy major-name brand goods in reusable plastic, glass and metal containers.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:59 AM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

Coke cares about reducing plastic pollution about as much as it cares about reducing childhood obesity.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:10 AM on October 17, 2019 [7 favorites]

For those that are unaware, aluminum cans are lined with plastic. Wired has piece that talks about it.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 8:12 AM on October 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

it looks like Loop is live

It seems to me that using the same logistics pathways for packaging return as for product delivery makes good sense, whether that involves swapping a Loop tote full of empty packaging for a full one at the door, or doing a scaled-up version of something similar at supermarket level.

A mandatory deposit of the order of $1 per container could make the latter scheme run quite sustainably. Ten cents is not quite enough in 2019; a dollar is something that most people would be far less willing to toss out their car window than 10c.
posted by flabdablet at 8:40 AM on October 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Have the folks that research this reviewed the issues with re-tooling a massive international infrastructure? I can find coke in glass bottles in the local chain grocery, a few at a much higher price. It's important, vital, life changing -- but any thought how to actually do it? I just start thinking of a 'napkin' list and it's just too long for a comment even here. Build up major glass infrastructure, vast new factory tooling, impact on communities, Just Do It... but whew...
posted by sammyo at 8:42 AM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Issues with re-tooling a massive international infrastructure didn't stop them cutting over to disposable plastic containers in the first place. Every single bottling and shipping plant would have required an extensive refit for that; it must have cost billions.
posted by flabdablet at 8:52 AM on October 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

At my local chain grocery, at least, the Coke in glass bottles is Mexican.
posted by box at 8:54 AM on October 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Glass is heavier so it takes more gasoline to move it around. And glass recycling isn't as simple as it sounds. Washing glass uses clean water, another thing that's becoming more and more endangered.

All this washing and transporting of home recycling makes me very suspicious as to the cost/benefit of consumer recycling in general. There's a lot of "feel good" marketing around it, and it's promoted as a way to offset blame from the biggest polluting culprits around the world. Think "energy saving tips" from Exxon and the like. It's very much about marketing and advertising.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:44 AM on October 17, 2019 [5 favorites]

You don't HAVE to re-use the bottle in order to recycle glass. Just crush it and mix it with the RAW materials.
posted by Burn_IT at 11:42 AM on October 17, 2019

My understanding is that the economics of glass recycling are to the point where many municipal collection services won't take it anymore. That it's technically possible to recycle glass that's been broken doesn't mean it's possible to break even financially while doing so.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:55 AM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

I would be more inclined to buy soda if I could get it in big jugs from the store, like you can do with growlers of beer. Sending the syrup around is way cheaper than sending the prepared product since you're sending proportionally more with less space, packaging, and gas.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:58 AM on October 17, 2019

I physically cannot consume 20 oz of anything and I get so perturbed when I'm jonesing for a soda and I'm out and about and the only way I can purchase one is in a vessel where I'm guaranteed to waste half of it. A 12oz can is the perfect hydration solution and they are so rare anymore in places where cold pop is sold.

I use reusable plastic can tops on any fizzy drink that comes in a standard sized can. I wish they made them for the standard crowler size cans too because I'm pretty much just a half one beer at dinner drinker when I do drink (growlers are okay but at the rate I drink they are quite flat by the time I am done).
posted by srboisvert at 12:36 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Aluminum bottles are a thing. If the drink is bigger than 12oz/355ml then just put it in an aluminum bottle if that is better to recycle than plastic or glass.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:43 PM on October 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

As I understand it, glass has to be carefully sorted by color, or else everything ends up brown. This adds to the manual work involved in the intake process, and risks a lower profit margin when selling the results.

The question of whether the materials of a given color are broken or intact is lower-priority than this.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:47 PM on October 17, 2019

Glass is heavier so it takes more gasoline to move it around. And glass recycling isn't as simple as it sounds. Washing glass uses clean water, another thing that's becoming more and more endangered.

Washing glass also involves using lots of caustic acid. I know because I spent two shifts on top of bottle soaker at the Molson brewery in Toronto pulling bottles out of a "soaker" machine's honeycomb bottle holders trying to figure out where the bad honeycomb was that was chipping bottle tops. Those fumes were so awful and it was so hot that the plant supervisor who had said "Conditions are rough up so I am going to stick with you guys" noped right off to the exec cafeteria about 15 minutes in.

We were also trained that if something ever dripped on our head in the plant we were not to look up. Because you don't really want bottle cleaning acid in your eyes.

I'm pretty sure the waste water from that now-closed brewery went straight out into Lake Ontario.

Also the tech at the time couldn't deal with certain kinds of plastic inside the bottles - laminated playing cards would survive. So would hypodermic syringes. Also lots of other kinds of dirt. The systems to detect these contaminates were Laverne & Shirley-esque workers on the line watching hundreds of bottle a second go by and eyeballing the foam levels. I'm sure the tech has changed significantly in 20+ years but I bet there are still all kinds of complications.

Mass reuse of bottles at production was not simple or easy. It is much much better to re-use on the consumer end if you possibly can.
posted by srboisvert at 12:50 PM on October 17, 2019 [7 favorites]

What would we do without glass?

"How about those one-way beer bottles?" (...) "They chill faster, stay cold longer, and what's more, you know that bottle was made just for you!"
posted by blnkfrnk at 1:06 PM on October 17, 2019

Plastic bottles are probably less carbon intensive than collecting and washing heavier glass bottles. Taking petroleum out of the ground, making plastic bottles out of it and then burying the plastic petroleum back in the ground in landfills is maybe one of the more benign uses of petroleum. Tossing it in the ocean not so good.

Just put a container deposit on plastic bottles and much of the waste problem will disappear.
posted by JackFlash at 1:49 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Nothing wrong with an aluminum tallboy if you gotta have 16 ounces

I've recently seen these in some of the convenience stores around me. Many of them also have the 8oz cans and, less frequently, but still easy enough to find, glass bottles.

That said, the vast majority of the sales are of plastic bottles, and plastic is the only option for the vast majority of the brands on the shelf, so it's not like mere availability has changed many people's habit.
posted by wierdo at 2:02 PM on October 17, 2019

Those paper bottles are really paper-reinforced thin-film plastic bottles, and I would bet they result in considerably more microplastics. And less recyclable, I would bet.

Anyway, if you have to recycle something, you're already playing catch-up: "Reduce" comes before "Recycle" for a reason.
posted by Belostomatidae at 5:53 PM on October 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

Plastic bottles are probably less carbon intensive than collecting and washing heavier glass bottles.

I've heard the same thing said by beverage industry lobbyists interviewed on radio, only they said "possibly" instead of "probably". Which is exactly why I'd be interested in seeing a recent analysis that covers similar ground to Darnay A, Nuss G (1971) Environmental impacts of Coca-Cola Beverage Containers. Midwest Research Institute for Coca-Cola USA which I believe to be the report mentioned in the documentary.

If anybody has a link to the 1971 report, that would be an interesting read as well.
posted by flabdablet at 7:39 PM on October 17, 2019

It "probably" depends on the precise chemicals used and the source of energy to heat the cleaning water and whether or not the facility that cleans the bottles is colocated with the facility that fills the bottles.

Reverse distribution can be essentially free or it can be more resource intensive than burying the collected items. There, sadly, are no easy or universal answers to such questions, which is a big reason why there continues to be so much argument about climate change.
posted by wierdo at 8:21 PM on October 17, 2019

Arsen Darnay, the author of the report in question, is easily Googled and turns out to be a science fiction writer. If this documentary gets any traction, I would expect Coke's propaganda elves to make sure that this fact is put about, as in "the documentary cites an unnamed 1971 report credited to science fiction writer Arsen Darnay, which claims that..."

Here's a sample of his work from about the same period: Darnay, Arsen; Franklin, William E. (1969); The Role of Packaging in Solid Waste Management 1966 to 1976; Environmental Health Service (DHEW/PHS), Rockville, Md. Bureau of Solid Waste Management. Judge its quality for yourself.
posted by flabdablet at 10:53 PM on October 17, 2019

Even if it does turn out that re-manufacturing plastic bottles is a lower-impact packaging material re-use process than washing and re-using glass ones after taking transport weight and consumer safety into account, it seems to me that piggybacking on existing product delivery logistics channels to establish a return flow of packaging from end users to packaging suppliers would have to involve lower leakage to the environment and yield far better recycled-material purity than trying to re-jig existing waste-management systems.

It also seems to me that a fairly substantial legally mandated deposit value attached to every item of hitherto disposable packaging could well reduce overall leakage to very near zero without increasing the ongoing costs of using packaged goods to anybody except litterbugs. Which epithet, it seems to me, needs to start applying to anybody who sends anything at all to landfill, whether by formal or informal means.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 PM on October 17, 2019

Just a reminder to not demonize all single use plastics as disabled and ill people often require them to live. Making it entirely illegal would kill people and disproportionately affect marginalized groups.

That said, this shows how powerful these large corporations and marking plans are. This type of forced rhetoric is why people start arguing with friends and colleagues about individual recycling when it’s not an individual responsibility.

During any of the statements you’ll hear, “we plan to...” which literally meaningless.
posted by Crystalinne at 3:39 AM on October 18, 2019

Ocean plastic is a big and disturbing problem. But I haven't seen much analyis of what the best way to handle it is.

Apparently the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is mostly abandoned fishing gear:

A comprehensive new study by Slat’s team of scientists, published in Scientific Reports Thursday, concluded that the 79,000 tons was four to 16 times larger than has been previously estimated for the patch. The study also found that fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets.

I was also reading an article that suggested that most riverborn plastic comes from the developing world:

The real source of major ecological catastrophes... isn’t so much the existence of single-use plastics but rather poor waste management systems in developing nations such as China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and various African states.

Mismanaged waste in these countries is typically disposed of in open, uncontrolled landfills, where plastic can enter the marine environment through rivers, waste water flows or, simply, the wind. The wealthiest countries may have the highest rates of plastic use, but for the most part they have negligible rates of mismanaged waste and contribute minimally to marine plastic pollution.

Some 86 per cent of global river input of plastic to the ocean comes from Asia and 0.28 per cent from Europe. Economic development hasn’t necessarily been accompanied by a “throwaway culture”, as many activists contend; rather it is insufficient economic development that is the real problem behind plastic pollution.

From that it sounds like the most effective things that could be done would be to regulate the fishing industry, and provide aid for developing nations to have more effective waste management systems.

People in developed nations taking reusable containers to the store to be refilled, for instance, doesn't sound like it does much to affect the major sources of plastic pollution.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:12 AM on October 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

And microplastics in our waters come from car tires more than any other source.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:29 AM on October 18, 2019 [2 favorites]